imagina 2011 was held in Monaco February 1-3, 2011. The annual event is oriented toward 3D simulation and visualization. This year it included 1680 delegates from 44 countries around the world together with a large contingent of journalists writing on topics ranging from entertainment to 3D graphics to visualization of the urban landscape.
With a strong French language presence, many of the presentations were translated into English language as well. imagina included several conference areas of focus:
Imagina Awards Special Award – Prince Albert II De Monaco (left) to Joel Pourgaton (right) (Courtesy: imagina)
A highlight of the event is the imagina 2011 Awards. The awards recognise the contributions of individuals and organisations around the world who are exploring the boundaries of 3D graphics for simulation and visualisation. A special presentation was given by Prince Albert II of Monaco to Joel Pourgaton of Disney Enterprises Inc. for contributions to the field.
A special full length screening of the movie TRON 3D took place after the awards. The movie was presented in the French language (also translated) for the first time.
imagina 2011 also featured an exhibition that included several companies and organisations involved in simulation and visualisation technologies and services. These included:
Dassault Systemes – a manufacturer of 3D software for lifecycle management (PLM). The company’s software is used around the world for many projects involving 3D design that integrate benefits for society.
NVIDIA – the manufacturer of high quality computing chips, and inventor of the GPU – a technology providing enhanced performance for visualisation and game engines as well as 3D environments that demand rigorous and high quality clarity.
AMD / WINMOTION – creator of the Twinmotion technology that enables architects and engineers to design high quality 3D environments for different kinds of workflows that they are involved in.
Multistation 3D Printer – multistation.com
Most of my time was spent in the Urbanism and Landscape presentaitons where several papers were presented over two days. These presentations were oriented toward building information modeling (BIM), visualisation in 3D – often involving city models, infrastructure tools / technologies and discussions surrounding the use of 3D.
An opening day theme saw the presentation of the topic – “What BIM Could and Should Be… And What It Will Be in the Future.” During the discussions and debates that arose throughout the presentations, there was a sense that BIM does not necessarily hold a unique place.
It was suggested that BIM is only part of a wider integrated lifecycle experience that included many of the company’s and services present at the event. In fact, BIM on any given day is reflected by the project at hand and the current state of it’s assets and changing direction.
This implies that not all BIM projects are the same and that they include different BIM related approaches that invariably share common threads, although remain different.
Many in the audience agreed that 3D City Modeling was now becoming well accepted, but also felt that distinctions could be made between pictures of cities from different angles and those applications that included and supported the richer context of feature descriptions.
Benoit Frederique of Bentley, Inc. provided an interesting summary of the context under which 3D City GIS for Infrastructure is occurring and those factors driving the need for intelligent deesign and 3D visualisation. “The world’s population is increasing and expected to double by 2050,” he said. He also mentioned that fact that 3D design is not only about new buildings and infrastructure, but that it also involved a significant amount of already existing infrastructure. Frederique pointed to several major projects that are incorporating 3D into existing facilities – some of them large – including the Crossrail project in the UK that is involving 3D laser scanning. The communication aspect of these large scale 3D building projects (including 420 layers and 34 theme areas for Crossrail) benefit from “communication management tools that can handle the lifecycle of these projects from planning through to design, construction and maintenance.”
3d, Reality Augmented, Virtual Worlds – How 3d Immersive Technologies Are Revolutionizing Managerial Practices (Image: imagina)
The City of Helsinki was one of the first cities involved in 3D city models and began work in this area in 1987. That city has seen the technology evolve. Thus, it’s own city model has also changed over time and current operations are expanding toward the mapping, 3D planning and visualisation of the underground environments within the city.
CityGMl is part of that model and is providing a meaningful way for data to be shared and communicated, thereby providing improved interoperability. The product LandSIM 3D from Bionautics has also been used during the development of this model.
International Intraverse Awards 2011 – (Image: imagina)Karine Vezina of SMi International, a land planning group of 1,235 people based in Quebec, Canada spoke about some of the recent projects she has been involved with that include 3D visualisation. “3D is integral and part of the projects that we become involved in,” she said. The company works on projects involving landscape design, noise abatement, restoration and city modeling. A recent project included the City of Montreal and included several sketches as part of the communication strategy. other projects, such as a restoration project work with engineering and design documents and closely follow standardisation when it comes to including 3D elements.
Simon Mabey of ARUP Foresight Innovation Group spoke on the need for ‘forces’ originating from the top-down, and said that there were issues with different people calling 3D-city modeling related projects by different names. He described 3D visualisation efforts for the London Olympics site – termed 3D GIS. ARUP has also been involved in projects for the City of Manchester and was involved in other work for 3D city modeling that included flood related issues. This project was for the City of Leeds and invluded 7 different flood management areas.
Jean-Baptiste Reynes, CEO of ENODO, gave a keynote for the section ‘ How Can 3D Improve the Prospects of an Urban Area, Town or City’. He mentioned that there were many definitions for 3D and that people were moving toward the usefulness of 3D. “The knowledge embedded within 3D technologies is not well known by many people,” he said. That directed to the fact that there is a shortage of skilled 3D people capable of working on 3D projects.
“3D needs to explore space and incorporate space in such a way we have the real vs. the realistic,” Reynes suggested. On this point he mentioned that people are looking to include the value of the data underlying the 3D visual cues.
They want to understand what it means and that representations must include a sense of truth, of reality and contain information that are required. The later suggesting we need standards for viewing and understanding 3D context. But a consideration that also points in the direction of ethics when it comes to 3D visualizations.
Lionel Bretin presented on a project from ADU Pays de Montbeliard. That community received the benefits of a 3D model that helped them to discuss and assess urban planning within the community. He suggested that we need more and improved tools for working with 3D. “We need to develop a culture of 3D,” he said.
The Grenoble area of France has also been involved the use of 3D and the development of visualization for urban development. With 23,000 people and 4 square kilometers of area, the approach taken was consultation oriented. Christophe Marechal discussed the issues relating to ‘operational lessons’ that the project experienced. LandSim3D was again used in the development of this work.
“We need reasonable goals when starting and it helps to begin smaller,” he said. He also expressed concern about the issues of scale and the quality and precision of data that is used for developing 3D related work.
Franck Touyaa spoke about the City of Cergy, France. This project has been operating for a while and he wanted to present on the changes over the preceding year. Located 40 km from Paris, the region has 57,000 inhabitants within 14 sq. km. and has grown from 2500 people in 1953. it includes 650 dwellings in 2009 and is expected to see 2500 structures by 2014 – placing the need for planning and development on the agenda. “We wanted to integrate our 3D into a multi-scale approach,” he said. “The idea was to keep our model in motion and operating in real-time.” The buildings are established within the 3D model, but the public areas are still being worked upon. Touyaa did mention the issue of time and that administering the model is more complex.
“This work has helped us to understand how to work with 3D city modeling, the techniques, and has shown us issues like trees blocking views etc.” He also said that the project has resulted in the development of a library of objects and furniture.
Pascal Mueller talked about the Procedural City Engine – a software used for building 3D smart cities. The approach using this software is to decide upon the kind of city that is to be designed, then to select the rules that can be used to develop it. This is an interesting approach to the development of 3D Cities. It has been used in the City of Zurich. A benefit to this approach is that a city plan can be determined and then the rules can be changed to allow for development that meets the design. The software has also been used in the City of Rotterdam together with ArcScene where building analysis has been performed. Procedural has also been coupled with the NVIDIA Reality Server.
imagina 2011 builds on the strength of early events and this year’s edition seemed like the best to date. It included a larger number of exhibitors, broader range of presentations and greater number in attendance.
Other Reports Blogged from the Event
— imagina 2011: Skyline – Bringing a 4D World
— Monaco: imagina 2011 – Architecture, Design & Urbanism
